The Good Dryer
May thirtieth. There is one dryer in our neighborhood laundromat that costs an extra quarter and nobody can explain why. The drum sounds fine. The heat seems equivalent. There is…
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16 entries tagged #adulting.
First Day of the New Thing, Sort Of
September thirtieth. I want to state clearly that I had printed the schedule. I had printed it, put it on the kitchen table, poured the cold brew, and then, in a sequence of event…
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I Knew Nothing, It Turns Out
September nineteenth. I would like to state, for the record, that I walked into that room with a reasonable level of confidence. Not arrogance. Just the quiet, untested assumption…
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Seven Things, None of Them the Thing
June twelfth. I went to the store for one item. I will not tell you what it was because the specificity of it would make this too embarrassing, but it was a single, ordinary, comp…
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The Laundry Has Been Clean for Three Hours
August thirty-first. The plan was to do laundry, fold it while it was still warm, and be finished by noon. It is now almost four o'clock and the basket is sitting in the middle of…
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Four Gifts and No Tape
December twenty-first. The plan was to get this done in an hour. That was two hours ago, and I am currently sitting at my kitchen table with one piece of tape stuck to my thumb an…
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The Bag Is in the Bagging Area
February fifth. The self-checkout machine at the grocery store does not believe I am a real person. I don't mean that philosophically. I mean that I placed the reusable bag in the…
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The Rigatoni Question
August twenty-fourth. There is a letter on my kitchen counter. It's been there for a little while now, Carol's, the fourth one, the one with the thing about my mother inside it th…
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Gerald Witnessed Everything and He Will Not Be Testifying
June twenty-first. The smoke detector went off at 6:47 PM and then again at 7:03 PM, which means I had sixteen minutes between alarms during which I apparently learned nothing. He…
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Forty-Eight Quarters
January eighth. The laundromat on the corner takes exact change only, which I knew, and somehow still managed to show up forty cents short. I've been doing laundry at this place s…
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Four Cans of Chickpeas
I went to the grocery store this morning without a list. I want to be very clear that I knew I was doing this. I stood in the kitchen, thought 'I'll remember,' and left. This is n…
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The Keys Were Right There
Wednesday. I locked my keys in the car. I want to be clear that I saw them the moment I shut the door, that little silver gleam through the window, keys dangling from the ignition…
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The Part Where I Buy Three Pastas
Errand day. I made a list. The list had seven things on it, including one that just said 'produce, figure it out,' which is a sign of either confidence or delusion and I'm honestl…
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The Sock That Outlasted October
December tenth and I finally did the laundry. Not the catch-up load, the real one. The one where you move things that have been sitting in the basket long enough to need refolding…
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Certified Mail and Other Things Nobody Explains
The post office is not complicated. I know this. I have been inside a post office before. But there is a difference between going to the post office with someone who knows what th…
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The Spreadsheet That Told the Truth
It started with a blank piece of notebook paper and a pencil. No Excel, no calculator app, just columns I drew with a ruler because it felt more official that way, like making it…
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